


Implicit Memory

by geoclaire



Category: Carmilla (Web Series), Carmilla - All Media Types
Genre: Bondage, F/F, The Apocalypse, The Dean - Freeform, Vampires, also poor danny, but hey i'd be up to watch this any time, her life is totally hard, the ot3 is there if you squint okay, you don't have to squint hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 22:53:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5803474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geoclaire/pseuds/geoclaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The big battle approaches, and Danny and Carmilla work on testing Danny's control of her vampire self. </p><p>But what's the greatest challenge to her control? How would you test that?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Implicit Memory

**Author's Note:**

> For @honestlynatalie, for winning my followers giveaway. She gave me the prompt ‘Norway’, and I ran away and Did Bad Things with it. She's fine with it.
> 
>  
> 
>  _Implicit memory_ , or muscle memory, is a habitual movement or motion that the initiator no longer needs to be aware of to complete.

You hold the silver cross against her jaw for the better part of a minute. You're old enough that it's a barely buzzing irritation against your fingertips, but Danny is sweating and tense with the effort of resisting releasing her fangs.

She's blood deprived and struggling, effort plain on her face, but she doesn't lose control. And that’s good, because it’s also what you're testing.

You let the cross drop, and it hits the floor with a metallic thunk. Her eyes close, and you watch her heavy breathing, the tricks of self calming she has yet to unlearn. For now, you're glad she has this trick. You've yet to establish calming techniques for the undead - anything dependent on physiology is pretty much useless when your cells don't need to respire.

“Good work, Xena,” you say, and once it would have been sarcastic, but you’ve learned to be sincere with her. “No vamping out.”

“Despite extreme provocation,” she says. Her eyes are still closed, but her breathing is slowing. “How’d you know that about the silver against your jaw?”

You shrug, a useless movement since she isn’t looking at you. “Peasants in the eighteenth century were both sceptical and inventive. No instagram to distract them from coming up with a range of practical tests to detect the paranormal.”

She raises her eyebrows, before tossing her hair out of her eyes to meet yours. “Somehow, I am always comforted when some torturous thing you know wasn’t learned from your mother.”

“Our mother,” you correct automatically, and then wince. “And don’t get too comfortable, she’s more than creative enough to make us both miserable through most of eternity.”

Danny pulls a face, and you think that sometimes you almost like this girl. “I’d rather be in the pit with the anglerfish.”

“And so would I, but I can’t see her restraining herself to interment this time. Not when I’ve made multiple efforts to fight her. And snatched her wee fledgling,” you add drily, and you pat Danny’s hair above her temple. She gives you a look.

“You wanna let me go now?” she asks, and shrugs her shoulders to allude to her hands tied to the chair.

You probably should let her go. She’s passed every test you’ve given her, has worked her mighty high ass off to earn control faster than you’ve ever seen another vampire do it. Granted, most of them don’t want control initially, but Big Red has all the incentive a girl could ask her. Going against your mother… well, it’s one reason you’ve put so much effort into getting Danny ready. You need all the help you can get, and she’s passed every test you’ve devised to push her.

It’s just that there’s one thing you will know will push her buttons, snap her control, faster than anything you alone can do to her.

“As much as I enjoy the tables being turned,” you say slowly, considering. “There’s one other thing we could try.”

She rolls her eyes, but accedes. “I don’t know what it’s going to prove that I haven’t already, but if it’ll make you feel better, I’m game.”

You look away, so she won’t see the way your face tightens at what you’re thinking of. She’s going to hate it, and probably, she’s going to hate you for it too.

That doesn’t make it a bad idea.

You slide away from her quickly, duck into the corner and pull a blood bag from the fridge. You don’t have anything as humiliating as the sippy cup the Dimwit Squad once had you drink from, but you pop the cap and bring it to Danny as is. It’ll be a pain in the ass with her hands tied, but she can probably suck most of the contents up.

“Here. I’ll be back in a bit.” you tell her flatly. She’s got the bag in her mouth, and she can’t answer before you leave.

You think you’re glad. You don’t want to answer her questions.  


* * *

 

 Against the odds, Laura doesn’t say no. Not straight out.

“Explain to me again why you think this is a good idea,” she says.

She’s sitting on her desk chair, her gaze even and piercing. And no, she didn’t say no, but she is less than thrilled with the idea. That’s obvious.

You go to her, and you kneel at her feet. She’s matured the last few years, given up her tv series and her fanfic and her tumblr page, and you miss the girl you thought annoyed the life out of you even as you’re grateful for the leader she has become. You take her hands in yours, and you meet her gaze as evenly as you can.

“Cupcake. Laura. You know that we need all the help we can get,” She starts to interrupt, but you hush her. “We have planned, and we have a strategy, and we have more people on our side than I dared to hope. But if Danny can’t control herself, she’s going to be the worst kind of liability, and I will not risk that without testing her as far as I am able.”

Laura cocks her head to the side, evaluating your face as much as your words. She’s gotten good at that, learned to look for deception and tics and possession. You only hope she sees your sincerity, because what you are asking from her is ugly and frightening. You don’t ask lightly.

She searches your eyes, thinking. Her brow wrinkles, and you lift one hand from hers to touch the line it makes with your thumb. She’s too young to have worry lines, but she’s getting them. She turns her head into your palm for just a moment, her eyes closing, and you hold the moment against you like a talisman.

“Why this?” she asks finally. “Why after all the tests you’ve put her through, every check of her control, every chance in the field, why test her this way?”

You smile, but it’s sad.

“Do you honestly think there’s anything that would challenge Danny’s control more?”

 

* * *

 

Laura walks hand-in-hand with you back to the room where you’ve left Danny, and her skin against yours reminds you with every step that you do not deserve her. You never have, but that isn’t going to make you give her up, not this late in the day.

You grip her tighter when you reach the door, draw her back against you when she would have gone in.

“You can still change your mind,” you tell her, but you both know she won’t. She’s never been good at backing down, and if she’s decided that this is what she needs to do to maximise your chances of success…

You try again. “Do you remember your safe word?”

Laura half smiles, but you can tell she’s already in the room in her head, evaluating what she expects to find. “Norway,” she confirms, and you return her smile.

“After this, when we win, I _will_ take you to see the auroras,” you promise, and now her smile is real. You lean forward to kiss her lightly, but her mouth opens under yours, soft and hot, and then you’re licking at her teeth and pressing her against the door.

She fists her hand in your hair, her tongue fluid and lithe against your lips, and you push forward, grinding your hips between her legs. She moans, and you’re about to pick her up against the door when her hand come down to your chest and she pushes you away. She maneuvers from between you and the door, and you try to breathe because it had worked so well for Danny.

“That’ll make it easier, but we should do this in there,” she says, and tilts her head to the door. She pauses.“What are you going to do, do you have a plan?”

You gaze into her eyes, trying to be calm.

“Your reaction will be better if you don’t know.” you tell her, and then you push the door open.

You let her enter first, look around and get her bearings and even smile at Danny, who has an impressively small amount of blood trailing down her chin. But you catch the door before it closes fully, and when Laura takes a step towards Danny, you kick it open with a crash.

They both jump, and you dart across the room, using speed you’ve practiced but so rarely let a human see. Laura is still mid-flinch when you slot yourself in behind her, hips against her ass, and take a grip on her hair.

Laura at least knew what the plan was. She jumps at your speed, but she relaxes fractionally into your body, muscle memory serving that far.

Danny, on the other hand, has gone so rigid you can see the tendons stand out in her neck. “Carmilla,” she starts, tense and angry, but you speak over the top of her.

“How’s your control now, puppy?” you ask, and you slide your free hand blatantly, sensuously over Laura’s stomach. When it reaches her far hip, you pull her hard against you, and you can feel her tremble against you. You take the hand in her hair and use it to loosen the twist she keeps her hair in, teasing free the strands so it lies soft and free against the white skin of her neck.

“Carmilla, seriously??” Danny is squirming against her bonds now, resisting the restraints and on the verge of real anger. “You think _this_ is a better test of my control?”

Laura goes tense against you when Danny shouts, but you stroke your thumb over the skin above her hip and she eases. She trusts you. Danny, though…

You lower your head over Laura’s shoulder, nuzzling her hair aside and pressing your nose against her skin. The crook of her neck, the hollow below her jaw, these are particularly delicious, but when she raises her chin just a little you can press your nose against her jugular and smell her heartbeat through her skin.

“Car - Carmilla, come on! This is bullshit!” Danny’s still arguing, angry but rational. “How is this more of a test than your silver and holy water? This isn’t a test, it’s just creepy.”

She’s trying to sound reasoned, but she's also staring at you both, her muscles flexed under the ropes holding her back. You know she can break them, if she really has to, you’ve carefully selected them to reflect the upper limits of vampiric strength. She’s angry, but that that she hasn’t yet broken through is a good sign.

You meet her eyes coolly, your nose still pressed into Laura’s throat. Laura’s breathing is rapid against you, her heartrate right up and her breath through her nose, but you can feel her determination in the set of her muscles. She presses back against you, silent encouragement.

You stand straighter, holding on possessively to Laura.

“Your test, puppy, is to sit tight and watch,” you tell Danny. “Not to get angry, not to pop your teeth, not to come running to save the day. If you sit there and don’t lose it, I may actually be convinced you have the control to face down our mother.”

You see the defeat in her face, but she turns to Laura instead, pleading now. “Laura. Laura, come on, you don’t think this is a good idea, do you?”

Laura is strong, and brave, and indomitable, but she struggles when they plead. You know that, so you don’t give her a chance to respond when Danny begs. You turn her head with a hand on her chin and you kiss her, quick and deep, to avoid her answering.

She twists in your arms, her hands coming to the front of your shirt, and opens her mouth to you. You take a handful of her hair to angle her mouth and then plunder it, your tongue stroking deep and smooth into her. Her hips tilt into yours in learned response, but when you pull away her teeth catch your lip and bite.

You tug away, and you look past her to Danny. She’s glaring at the both of you, at your fist in Laura’s hair and the way Laura’s hands are gripping onto your shirt. And she’s taut, her muscles visibly contracting and her lips starting to peel back to show her teeth, but her canines haven’t extended.

You turn your attention back to Laura, in your arms and staring up at you. You slide your nose the length of hers, a tiny gesture, and then you turn her side on to Danny to start unbuttoning her shirt.

It’s a fitted business-style blouse, something she would never have worn before but that’s become more and more common in her wardrobe now. You’re efficient with the buttons, but when you slide your hands into her shirt, you caress her stomach and the sides of her breasts as you slide your hands up to ease it off of her shoulders. Laura shivers when your thumbs trace down her triceps, goosebumps forming down her arms as you drop her shirt to the floor.

She sways into you, and your hands slide to her ass to pull her against you. She makes a little sound when your hips meet, and then your mouths are open together, slick and sliding and your tongue promising things you can’t say. You grope her ass, and she forgets Danny long enough to moan into your mouth. It vibrates through you, prickling through your canines and making you _want_.

“Carmilla,” Danny warns, but she’s tied to a chair and you’re meant to be testing her. You break the kiss to pick up Laura, her legs hooking automatically around your waist, and then you bury your face into her neck and kiss and nip until she’s shuddering against you.

When you draw blood, things change.

You don’t think Laura even notices. You’re kissing and licking at her neck and you know everywhere, every iota of her neck that is sensitive and soft and calling to you. She knows what her neck does to you and she likes to tease you, wearing off the shoulder shirts and letting her hair loose so that her skin calls to you. In turn, she’s become more sensitive to your attentions here. Your kisses can make her giggle, or they can make her moan and writhe. You think you could make her come without touching below her collarbone.

But Danny smells her blood. And the moment she does she’s straining at her ropes with an all-new intensity, threads starting to split under the pressure.

“Get the fuck off her, you undead goddamn leech,” she spits, and it’s slurred because her teeth are starting to extend. She lunges within her bonds, and you hear fibres pop.

Laura stiffens against you, and you let her down. Roleplay is one thing, but not if Danny is actually going to lose it. You turn, poised and ready to restrain her if need be, but Laura steps in front of you. She holds out her hand.

“I want it, Danny,” she says simply. “You can call Carm a leech, but I don’t care if she bites me. And you, _you_ have to calm down, because I need you at my back and I can’t do that if we can’t trust you not to lose it.”

It’s so easy to underestimate Laura. So easy, because she’s tiny and her face is so soft and she believes so much in the goodness of people. And you know that, but you do it so often anyway.

Because Danny has come to trust you, mostly. She trusts you with her life and her training and learning control. Mostly, she even trusts you with Laura. But part of her always remembers the time when you were the enemy and she came bursting in to save the day, thinking you’d probably killed Laura already. And that is what comes roaring to life, screaming defiance, when she smells Laura’s blood and you.

But Laura has put herself between the two of you, calm and collected, and told Danny she wants you to do it. That she wants you to do it, and that Danny must hold still and clamp down on her every instinct.

You are in awe of this woman, sometimes.

Danny stares up at her, her pulse visible in her throat and her cheek muscle twitching. Her canines are pressing at her lower lip, just starting to extend, but when Laura waits, Danny takes a breath and her shoulders loosen.

“Good,” Laura says. Then she breaks their gaze, and turns back to you. “Carm, come here,” she directs, and you go to her.

You’re a bare meter from the chair Danny is tied to, and Laura pulls you into your former position, pressed along her back. She brings your hands to cup her breasts over her bra, and you automatically caress her nipples with your thumbs. She twitches, her breath uneven, and presses further into you.

“Carm,” she says. “Carm, I want you to take my pants off. And then I want you to fuck me here, on the floor, so Danny can see. And I want _you_ ,” and she looks to Danny, “to sit there and watch, and not vamp out, not even when Carm bites me. Do you understand?”

You reel at the extent of the demand, but Danny nods. It’s only faint, but it’s clear the fight’s gone from her, and you think maybe this is all it takes for her to maintain control, that Laura asks it of her. It doesn’t work for you, because you have never inspired her devotion, but Laura… well. It’s hard not to love Laura, and it’s not something you can hold against Danny, not any more.

Laura turns back to you. “I told you what I wanted,” she reminds you.

You close your eyes, and then you reach around and undo her jeans. You toe off her shoes, and then you ease her tight jeans over her hips and then down her legs. They’re close fitting, another part of the image she projects these days, and you are glad when they are gone.

You tug your own shirt off, wanting her skin on yours, and then you embrace her again from behind. Her shoulder blades sit against your breasts, her bottom cupped between the swell of your hips, and you can smell the sweetness of her blood and of her arousal. You look over her shoulder to Danny, and you see the moment she picks up on the scent, her eyes suddenly brightening.

But Laura rocks against you, soft and insistent, and now you can finally give her your attention, give up the split focus that has disadvantaged her so far. You hold her hips and grind into her ass, dropping your mouth to her neck, and she writhes against you as you lick and kiss at the curve of her neck, the delicious muscle where neck becomes shoulder.  You can’t quite reach to kiss her mouth, but you can attach your mouth to the length of her neck, her jaw, that sweet spot in the hollow, and _suck_.

Danny growls when she sees the marks you’re leaving but you don’t care because it’s halfhearted and you’re enthralled, wrapped up in Laura with Danny as only a secondary concern. Laura’s handled that, Laura is in control, and so you lick at her jaw and you tease a hand across the soft surface of her lower belly and into her panties.

She shudders when you start to finger her, movements light and teasing against the slickness between her legs. And you know what Laura likes, how to touch her, and how she likes to watch. And so you slow it down and make it look good, your fingers outlined inside the cottony material of her underwear. You dart your fingers over her clit, light and flicking, and she squirms and sighs, watching the fluid, obscene motions of your fingers against her.

You know Danny is watching. The quickness of her breath, the pheromones coming off her, give her away, and anyway Laura has told her to. And so you finger Laura slow and filthy, loving the cut off noises she’s making against you, and making a hell of a show of how your fingers slide against her. You make her tremble, and when she’s closing her eyes and forgetting everything but how you’re making her feel, you stop.

“I - Carm!” she cries out in protest, forgetting everything but her need, and you smile.

“You wanted me to fuck you, cupcake,” you remind her, and you put your hands on her shoulders and you press her down softly until she’s on her knees, still closer to Danny.

You think if you pushed Laura down onto all fours, they’d almost be touching, and you can’t tell if it’s lust or jealousy that fills you at the thought. But when you sink down behind Laura, you’re looking at Danny’s face, and you see what twists across her when you pull Laura’s panties aside. There’s lust, but also jealousy, and a kind of love that burns you to see it.

You can’t deal with that right now. There isn’t some appropriate way to manage it, not that won’t change the dynamic Laura needs right now, and you ignore it to slide your your fingers inside Laura from behind.

She cries out, high and needy, and Danny shudders at the sound, her weight at the edge of her chair. Laura though, Laura is _hot_ and wetter than you'd thought, and you moan at the way your fingers slip so easily into her. You flex them inside her, scissoring to find the angles, and she writhes about on her knees til you think she'll bruise, her hands grasping uselessly at one another. Her hair is in the way, seeming to stick to every possible inch of exposed skin you each have, and you reach up to wrap it around your fist, holding her still to thrust deeper into her.

She yelps the first time you do it, surprised by the depth or the angle of the penetration, and you would worry but you know that sound. And so you smirk instead and you push harder into her, pressing forward until you find the softer skin you're looking for, dragging your fingers across it each time. You use the hand in her hair to guide her, rocking her into each thrust of your fingers so that each one stretches her progressively deeper. She whimpers and it makes you twitch, suddenly aware of the tightness of your own pants against your clit, and you think of after, once she's come against your fingers, having her fuck you on the floor here in front of Danny. Hand in your pants and your teeth on her neck.

You growl, and you look up at Danny. She’s near rigid, veins are standing out on her forehead as she watches you, tonguing at her teeth with her mouth open. You smirk, and scrape your teeth over Laura's neck by your fisted fingers.

Laura whimpers again, and Danny growls in response, but it breaks off and becomes a whine as she watches your lips and your teeth over Laura, marking her again and again.

But Laura's getting desperate, her hands reaching back and holding your mouth and face against her, and you have to let it go. You slip your hand across her chest and pinch her nipple and her mouth falls open, her hands loosening around you. And you escape her grasp, dropping down to sink your teeth into the outside of her thigh, your hand coming down to frig her clit through the material of her panties.

She gasps, and Danny twitches, and Laura rocks harder against your hands until you twist your wrist _just right_ and she comes, rushing on a pulse of fluid and hormones that you can taste. You rub at her clit still, working her through it, and you gaze up at her through lazy eyes to where she’s looking at Danny.

Danny, whose face is as red as her hair and smells goddamn desperate, but whose teeth have remained firmly in their gums.

Laura pets your hair, slow and affectionate, and you retract your teeth and kiss her thigh. She’s gone limp and calm, and you sit up and gather her against your chest, pulling her into your lap as she sways against you. You hold her, nosing absently along the line of her arm, and you look at the way Danny is looking at the both of you. Tense, and yet somehow tender.

“Good work,” you tell her simply, and you could mock her now but you don’t. Not with the way she’s looking at the pair of you.

Laura stirs against you, and you resettle her absently, easily stroking her hair. She yawns, languid and lazy, and then she lifts her head and turns to Danny.

“Thank you,” is all she says.

There’s so much in it.

  


**Author's Note:**

> And as always, you can follow me at geoclaire.tumblr.com


End file.
